March 28, 2008
Hillary's Soccer Fantasy (Dick Morris)
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Hillary Clinton’s made-from-whole-cloth fantasy about the perils of her trip to Bosnia was no unique foray into the world of make-believe accomplishments.
She’s been doing that for a long time.
Here’s another telling example: At a 1997 race-relations forum for teenagers in Boston, Hillary recalled the “pain” of a “childhood encounter” that helped her to grasp the injury suffered by the victims of bigotry. Her comments came as her husband was launching his second term in office by calling for a national dialogue on race and reconciliation. In an effort to empathize with her audience and inject herself into the discussion, she made up yet another incident that never happened.
“During a junior high school soccer game” on a cold day, Hillary claimed, a goalie told her, “I wish people like you would freeze.” Stunned, the future first lady asked how the goalie could feel that way when she didn’t even know her. “I don’t have to know you,” the goalie shot back, “to know I hate you.”
Nice story, but it never happened.
While today’s generation of young girls routinely play on multiple soccer teams in their schools and towns, Hillary’s generation had no such opportunity. Hillary may have attended lots of Chelsea Clinton’s soccer games, but that seems to be the sum total of her soccer career. As a school sport, girls’ soccer teams didn’t exist when Hillary went to middle or high school. In 2004, the athletic director for South Main High School in Park Ridge — and a 34-year veteran of the school system — confirmed that there were no girls’ soccer teams of any kind in Hillary’s school district in the 1960s.
Hillary seems to have simply conjured up the tale, like the one about the Balkans and the one about Chelsea jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11 and the one about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary, to appear more relevant to her listeners and to establish a bond of empathy with them.
(Girls’ soccer was catalyzed by the passage of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act in 1972, which mandated that girls’ and boys’ sports be treated equally in public education. It was only well after that law went into effect that girls’ soccer teams sprung up. Unfortunately, Hillary was 25 at the time and well past her intramural days.)
These “embellishments” of Hillary’s biography are similar to those of Al Gore during his race in 2000. But her claims to foreign policy experience and domestic policy influence in the White House are far more important. Nobody ever questioned the experience or competence of the vice president as he ran for the top job based on his decades of serving in federal office. But Hillary has had just seven rather uneventful years in the Senate. (And she hasn’t shown up for the last year while she was campaigning for president.) We have to take Hillary’s word about what role she played in the administration’s policy formulation. And her word has been increasingly disputed.
Just this week, former Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay, one of the original sponsors of the Family Leave Act, challenged her claim that she played a major role in passing the landmark bill. Hillary Clinton “never had anything to do with it,” he said. Clay pointed out that the bill had been passed several times by the Democratic Congress before Bill and Hillary ever arrived in Washington, but was subsequently vetoed twice by former President Bush. It was a no-brainer that Bill Clinton would sign the bill — as he did just 15 days after taking office. And, during that time, Hillary’s official schedules never mention the words “Family Leave Act.” Her tight calendar in those two weeks included lots of healthcare meetings, attending the funeral of Thurgood Marshall, joining the president at the National Prayer Breakfast (her schedules notes: no formal role for the first lady), attending a week-end session at Camp David with her latest New Age guru and hosting a dinner dance for the National Governors Association. But nothing about the Family Leave Act that she worked so hard to pass.
As we learn more and more about her propensity to make up stories and read herself into history — a modern Forrest Gump — we can be forgiven if we take her claims to have been central to everything from the economic recovery to the Irish peace process with a large grain of salt.
Why does she feel the need to enhance her relevance or dramatize her story with fantasies? When it comes to personal whoppers, like the soccer one, it’s likely that it’s because she’s seen how effortlessly Bill relates to his audiences, conveying empathy by biting his lip or with a tear in his eye. Hillary knows that she can’t do that. So she invents circumstances that compensate and put her in the midst of the action, at the center of events. She tries to create empathy, become close to the audience, through contrivance since she can’t project it adequately without resorting to fiction. It’s crazy, but relatively harmless.
But the stories about her fake co-president experiences are another issue entirely. Her tales of stopping the recession or speaking up for Rwanda (when no one — even the president — knew about the genocide or had any meetings about the issue) or being “instrumental” in the Irish peace process are not reminiscences of her days in the White House. They’re the calculated fantasies of a person who changes her stories when the truth is too prosaic or not sufficiently politically relevant. That’s Hillary Clinton.
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So Hillary lied,
And Hillary cried,
And Hillary pandered like mad.
But she failed the test
'Cuz she wasn't the best,
And Barry made Hillary sad.
Bill tried the race card,
And it wasn't too hard,
But it only made blacks hate her more.
After Reverend Wright,
She thought things looked so bright,
But Bosnia evened the score.
Comment by Igor R. — March 28, 2008 @ 5:05 pm
It's also Barack Obama. They both can fabricate at the drop of a hat. Psychotic.
Comment by Robert Rosencrans — March 28, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
how appropriately inadequate she must feel to embellish every facet of her uneventful life. She has done little that is not related to bill Clinton and even in her marriage she is the voyeur politically. she has no political relevance or experience and time is running out for her. but lying about her experiences is not helping now that the public is aware of her mendacity. poor hill.
Comment by james d granata — March 28, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
Maybe she feels inadequate.
Hey Dick, did you see the article that shows that the housing market in Cali has declined from 2/07 through 2/08 at the rate of $2800 PER WEEK.
I recall Rush Limbaugh claiming there was no housing bubble. He said the media made up the housing bubble and here is the link: http://bighousingbubble.blogspot.com/2006/04/limbaugh-says-media-made-up-housing.html
What a dumb arse. Maybe the dumbest guy who ever lived.
And to me that miscalculation on the part of Rush is a lot more lame than Hillary trying to pump herself up.
And with this $2800 PER WEEK decline in housing values comes McCain saying that he doesn't know much about economics. And get this Dick. Rush supports McCain too!! Hahahahahah.
Comment by Gary Anderson — March 28, 2008 @ 9:45 pm
Regarding the $2800+ per week house price decline for a year, here is the link for this free fall disaster. You know, Dick, the one that Rush said was being made up by the drive by media in 2006: http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/2008/03/california-housing-disaster-home-prices.html
Seems to me that Rush was the gangsta media IMO!
And with that crap from Rush that may have fooled many into buying at the peak, you are dwelling on Hillary's minor problems?
At least she didn't put people into financial jeopardy as Rush may have. We know that those buying at the top are underwater, that is fact.
Comment by Gary Anderson — March 28, 2008 @ 10:04 pm
I do not support Senator You-Know-Her because of what she HAS done; not because of what she HASN'T.
Her cheap-stunt "Constitutional Amendment" to ban a non-existent plague of free-speech in America — the notoriously somnolent Nation of Sheep — convinced me that she hasn't the first conception of our Constitution's historic devlopment in the EXPANSION of citizen rights, not their CURTAILMENT. She apparently never heard of PROHIBITION and its legacy of two self-cancelling amendments that simply disfigure the supreme law of our land.
As well, You-Know-Her could easily have voted with 23 other U.S. Senators and 133 U.S. Congressmen — and spoke out along with one Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama — and told Deputy Dubya Bush to stuff his stud-hamster vendetta against Saddam Hussein where the sun doesn't shine. Had she done so, she would not have me among her most ardent opponents today. I might not still vote for her, but at least I wouldn't demand a tar-and-feathering, as I do now for both her and John McBomb.
So much for horrendous judgment. As far as practical "experience" goes, her bumpkin bungling of Healthcare in 1993 so repulsed the American people that the Democrats lost control of the House and Senate for twelve years. After that colossal failure, You-Know-Her essentially retreated to shilling ghost-written books about "villages" and how to decorate dining room furniture in the White House.
So, I understand why You-Know-Her has to invent heroic fantasies — much like Ronald Reagan "remembering" his days "liberating concentration camps" in post-war Germany (which years he spent making Army training films in Culver City, California.) But such blatant fabrications, although embarrassing once exposed, pale to insignificance when compared with what You-Know-Her has no need to invent: namely, her lousy record of trying to meddle with the political life of the United States. The sooner she learns to leave that area of importance — i.e., our government — up to thoughtful and well-organized leaders like Barack Obama, then the sooner we can wave goodbye to the Dick Cheney Shogunate Regency AND the Bawl and Pillory Horror Picture Show.
Sometimes truth really does trump fiction in America. Not often, I'll admit. But when I've seen the last of the Partners in Pathos at President Obama's inaugural, I'll finally breathe a little easier for the formerly great Republic. Seeing Dick and Dubya in Slobodan Milosevich's old jail cell at the Hague wouldn't do my spirits any harm, either.
Comment by Michael Murry — March 28, 2008 @ 11:46 pm
Dick,
we all know how much you dislike the Clintons, how little chance Hillary has in getting a nomination, much less winning a general election. Everyone knows by now that her experience was mainly ceremonial along with health care initiative failure during the first 2 years. Why is this crusade against Hillary with every post? Is she the biggest threat this country is facing? Who are you really trying to impress, Obama people? It certainly looks that way. Do you care only about your clients getting elected, and not how they would govern?
Comment by Misha F — March 29, 2008 @ 2:20 am
You hateful people aee really digging aren't you? I wonder if you would dispute what she had for breakfast 20 years ago. Did anyone of you ever fill out a resume'? I bet you embellished just a little bit to get a job. Think, didn't you? Obama really tells whoppers. He hasn't distanced himself from Rev. Wright.
Comment by Lois — March 30, 2008 @ 1:33 am
Give us concrete proof. Can you get a tape of her Dateline interview re: Chelsea and Hillary's recount on 911?
Comment by Angellight — March 30, 2008 @ 7:57 am
Dick Morris isn't proof. Dick Morris is never proof. But the latest example cited by Mr. Morris to illustrate Sen. Clinton's serial mendacity can, "in fact," be verified.
Morris [1]:
—–
At a 1997 race-relations forum for teenagers in Boston, Hillary recalled the "pain" of a "childhood encounter" that helped her to grasp the injury suffered by the victims of bigotry. Her comments came as her husband was launching his second term in office by calling for a national dialogue on race and reconciliation. In an effort to empathize with her audience and inject herself into the discussion, she made up yet another incident that never happened.
"During a junior high school soccer game" on a cold day, Hillary claimed "a goalee told her 'I wish people like you would freeze.'" Stunned, the future first lady asked how she could feel that way when she did not even know her. "I don't have to know you," the goalee shot back, "to know I hate you."
Nice story, but it never happened.
While today's generation of young girls routinely play on multiple soccer teams in their schools and towns, Hillary's generation had no such opportunity. Hillary may have attended lots of Chelsea Clinton's soccer games, but, that seems to be the sum total of her soccer career. As a school sport, girls' soccer teams didn't exist when Hillary went to middle or high school. In 2004, the Athletic Director for South Main High School in Park Ridge — and a 34-year veteran of the school system — confirmed that there were no girls' soccer teams of any kind in Hillary's school district in the 1960s.
—–
Mr. Morris hardly helps his own cause with typical sloth & inattentiveness, e.g., Sen. Clinton did not attend "South Main" but Maine South.
However, according to online records maintained by the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) — the governing body of Illinois scholastic sports — Maine South did *not* field a girl's soccer team in 1964-65 [2], the interval claimed in Sen. Clinton's account. *Nor* did Maine East[3], another school attended by Sen. Clinton prior to Maine South.
But IHSA records do show Maine South fielding its *first* girl's soccer team in 1983 — 20 years after Sen. Clinton's alleged encounter with an opposing goalie.
[1] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342889,00.html
[2] http://www.ihsa.org/school/records/sum1613.htm
[3] http://www.ihsa.org/school/records/sum1612.htm
Comment by keli m — March 30, 2008 @ 2:23 pm
Dick even made Oberman's worst person in the world by apparently misquoting Hillary, when apparently she did not say Chelsea ran around the WTC. Congrats Dick!
Look I don't know if every candidate is for the New World Order. They may all be bought and paid for. Bill Clinton got to be friends with that miserable Rupert Murdock, and that is really the main reason why I would not vote for Hillary over Obama.
Comment by Gary Anderson — March 30, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
And they say you have no credibility when it comes to the Clintons, Dick. This is some hard-hitting reporting. Thank you for exposing Hillary as the non-soccer-playing middle schooler that she really is.
Comment by Connor — March 31, 2008 @ 10:23 am